How Not to Get Hacked Like Deloitte

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information shared by a person with direct knowledge of the incident said the company in fact does not yet know precisely when the intrusion occurred, or for how long the hackers were inside of its systems.

Additionally, forensic investigators identified several gigabytes of data that had been transferred to a server in the United Kingdom.

Amazingly, the hackers got into Deloitte’s systems via an administrator account protected only with a single password. That means Deloitte was not using multi-factor authentication, which is pretty much Cybersecurity 101 these days.

Multi-factor authentication vastly increases security by requiring at least one other form of identity verification in addition to a password, such as a text message sent to a mobile phone.

If your firm doesn’t have a secure way to manage passwords with multi-factor authentication, I highly recommend LastPass for Business. That Word doc on your desktop called “Passwords” isn’t going to cut it anymore.

For businesses that run multiple company files with QuickBooks Desktop, Intuit has launched the QuickBooks Online Multi-Company discount pricing structure. Now firms can move a desktop to QBO and pay the wholesale price for one subscription, and just $5 for each additional entity, up to a maximum of 15. The pricing is guaranteed for 5 years.

Now you can send queries directly to your client’s email address from within Xero HQ. Each query is stored within Xero HQ along with your client responses and any attachments, making multiple records, emails and notes a thing of the past. Ask will be available to all Xero HQ users from the end of this month.

Jason Blumer and Greg Kyte review a blog post from early 2017 about trends for accountants to watch out for. As always, they share their thoughts about how these ideas apply to the more entrepreneurial leaning CPAs. Geni Whitehouse joins them to discuss what clients REALLY need and why it’s so difficult for accountants to deliver.

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For additional resources for management accountants, visit https://floqast.com/resources/. FloQast (where I work) is close management software built by accountants for accountants to help them close faster and more accurately.